CCSSO State Consortium on Educator Effectiveness scee.groupsite.com

The InTASC LumiBook is finally here!  Today in collaboration with the School Improvement Network, CCSSO officially released the new online highly interactive free resource informally called the InTASC LumiBook.  The official title is InTASC Model Core Teaching Standards: An Interactive Guide to Understanding and Applying the InTASC Standards to Teacher Effectiveness and Student Success.

We are excited because of the potential of the book to model the new kind of learning that we are promoting with the Common Core. The InTASC LumiBook is an interactive cloud-based e-reading platform developed by the School Improvement Network that allows readers to collaborate in ..

CCSSO and Learning Forward will follow-up on the conversation started at the February Topical Meeting through a webinar, "Continuing the Conversation: Leveraging Professional Learning to Increase Principal Effectiveness" on Thursday, June 20 from 2:00 - 3:00 PM EDT.  The purpose of the webinar is to provide states the opportunity to share their implementation plans/early wins with using professional learning to increase principal effectiveness developed at February's Topical Meeting. 

We encourage you to gather the team that attended our February Meeting in Baltimore and participate in this webinar for the following three reasons:

1)     You told us at the February ..

As practitioners and policy makers seek ways to improve instruction and assessment, interest in competency-based instruction has grown over the past few years.  To further explore the relationship between competency-based practices and educator evaluation, SCEE is offering a two-part blog series.  Particularly, as schools, districts, and states begin to integrate the Common Core State Standards, competency-based instruction offers a different means of using standards to drive student learning on an individualized basis, allowing for "all students to [attain] the highest levels, empowers them to own and lead the learning process,...and equips them with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to succeed..." (Delorenzo, ..

The month's SCEE featured video highlights some of the conversations from the June 2010 Education Sector event, "Finding the Link: Teacher Evaluation and Professional Development." 

In this three minute segment, Brad Jupp states that the policy changes in teacher evaluation are grounded in the spirit of continuous improvement.  He argues that rather than focus on merit pay or firing teachers, the intent of including student performance as a significant element of teacher evaluation is to provide the more than 3 million practitioners across the country with the data that will help them move student achievement forward.  With student performance data ..

On Thursday, June 20 from 2:00 - 3:00 EDT SCEE and Learning Forward will present a special follow-up webinar.

Just three short months ago, CCSSO and Learning Forward hosted a joint Topical Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland on "Leveraging Professional Learning to Increase Principal Effectiveness." Twenty-eight states participated in the meeting and brought teams comprised of state education agency, district, principal, teacher leader, and higher ed representatives. Goals of the meeting included:

• gaining deeper understanding of the key behaviors of effective principals and the role school leaders play in improving teaching and learning, specifically in implementing the new Common Core Standards and ..

Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), Chairman of the US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, today introduced the "Strengthening America's Schools Act of 2013," a bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  

You can get the text of the bill HERE.    

Watch our " In the News " module for developments.

By Paul Ferrari

CCSSO rejects calls for a moratorium on high stakes tied to the Common Core State Standards. Instead, they urge states to remain committed to thoughtful consideration of how educator evaluation and high-stakes personnel decisions are made.

States have come together around principles to guide state leadership in assessment transition and to address several immediate state-federal issues in regards to assessment implementation. The principles address key issues essential to successful implementation of high-quality assessments aligned with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) or state college and career readiness (CCR) standards including assessments developed by the PARCC and Smarter Balanced ..

Join us for the next SCEE webinar, "Practical Advice for Integrating the Common Core into Educator Evaluation" on Tuesday, June 11, from 2:00-3:00 p.m. EDT, followed by a Live-Chat from 3:00-3:30 p.m. EDT.

Recently the Aspen Institute and CCSSO released a report, Teaching to the Core: Integrating Implementation of Common Core and Teacher Effectiveness Policies, which discusses the need for states to integrate their efforts to implement the Common Core with those associated with new educator evaluation systems.

This webinar will feature the report author, Ross Wiener, Vice President and Executive Director of the Aspen Institute's Education and ..

Learning Forward released a new policy brief yesterday that called on state education leaders to take the lead in creating coherent, comprehensive, and sustained statewide professional learning systems to help educators at every level meet the promise of the Common Core.

Seizing the Moment: State Lessons for Transforming Professional Learning is a first look at lessons learned through Learning Forward's Transforming Professional Learning to Prepare College- and Career-Ready Students: Implementing the Common Core initiative launched in August 2011 to develop a comprehensive system of professional learning that spans the distance from the statehouse to the classroom.

The policy brief underscores the ..

As the new national accreditor for educator preparation, the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) is seeking volunteers to serve on the its governance committees. This is an unprecedented opportunity to truly shape CAEP as the new accrediting body for educator preparation through service on its first governing bodies. In its commitment to inclusivity and transparency, CAEP is opening the application process to self-recommendation in addition to recommendations from CAEP member and affiliate organizations. CAEP will be soliciting volunteers from various sectors, including P-12 practitioners, policymakers, postsecondary faculty and administrators, employers, parents, school board members, and the public at-large. ..